Pitt's next speech was less successful. It was in support of a reduction of the standing army from 17,400 to 12,000. The contention seems almost incredible when it is considered that Pitt and his party were calling on the ministry to avenge the ill-treatment of British subjects by Spain. But, however inconsistent, it was probably deemed a popular move. Jealousy and dislike of standing armies was still strong among the people. Lord Hervey had told the Queen in 1735, 'that there was certainly nothing so odious to men of all ranks and classes in this country as troops,' and that 'as a standing army was the thing in the world that was most disliked in this country, so the reduction of any part of it was a measure that always made any prince more popular than any other he could take.'[114] Walpole had then maintained that the army should never be reduced below 18,000 men in view of the constant menace of the disputed succession, the turbulent character of the nation, and the necessity of a strong position in foreign affairs.[115] In this debate of 1738 he took much the same line. This sane view, as it was the policy of the Minister, was furiously combated by the young bloods of the Opposition. Lyttelton did not shrink from using the childish argument that a standing army weakened us abroad, as it made foreign governments believe that there must be violent dissensions in the country which it was kept to control. A taunt had in the course of debate been levelled at placemen; and Pitt, as a member of the Prince's household, vindicated the independence of officials, directing as he passed a shaft at the three hundred thick or thin supporters of the Government who were always so singularly unanimous on all political questions. The army, he said, was the chief cause of the national discontents, and yet these discontents were alleged as the chief cause for maintaining the army. Then he made the criticism so familiar to English public men even now, that the army cost three times as much proportionally to its size as the armies of France and Germany. On the question of disbanding troops, he took a strangely unsympathetic line. The officers would be put on half-pay, which was as high as full-pay elsewhere. And as for the private soldiers, 'I must think,' he said, 'they have no claim for any greater reward than the pay they have already received, nor should I think we were guilty of the least ingratitude if they were all turned adrift to-morrow morning.'[116] Pitt, it was obvious, had some distance to compass before he should become a popular leader. That he should have pressed at all for the reduction of the small standing army in the midst of an irresistible clamour for war is another proof of the heedless rhetoric of ambitious youth.